Bloodborne Mockup

Love this score, even bought it on CD from Japan for like $40. I do wish it was a bit more sophisticated at times, but I haven't found anything with such a convincing cosmic horror vibe before.

Have you notated this out? You've got a good framework going here, for sure. I don't have a working digital piano right now which makes this tricky, but there are a handful of things about the transcription I noticed (having transcribed a good deal of this):
-Some "sound design" elements make it a bit more difficult to pin down the actual instruments, but there are usually chords or octaves in places you have single notes (i.e. the intro drone). These are hard to pick up on at first but really serve to thicken the sound
-After the initial high strings note, there's another note playing with the trill in the brass
-The cello rhythm has 4 notes, as far as I can tell (rather than 3) -- the second note is repeated, i.e. 1-2-3-2, 1-2-3-2. Don't have a keyboard in front of me but I think it's something like C-D-Eb-D
-The second trill pattern (I believe) has a horns chord behind it too. Again, tricky to hear but a thickening thing
-The horn melody, I believe, is something like (if it's in Cm like I recall) -- C-Eb-D, C-D-B, C-Eb-D, G-F-Eb-D, F-Eb-D-Eb. Just another area with 4 notes rather than 3.

When I get my keyboard up I'll try and get a transcription up, but you've got the essence of it. It's hard when you don't have a score in front of you (you could always email Ryan Amon and ask him, he responded to me when I asked him questions and Garry Schymann (Bioshock) has sent me sheet music before when I asked).

I do agree that spending too much time on a piece like this probably isn't worthwhile, and IMO the second half is a little more on the "epic music" side of things and doesn't carry the same interest. As for other tracks within this score, I liked "Hail The Nightmare" as well as "The Night Unfurls" for transcribing. I think "Amygdala" is not bad too. The rest is fun but I don't think overly worth the time considering there's no score available.

 

PS -- Not sure if you're interested, but I found transcribing the LOTR score to be helpful. It has some weirder, darker passages and it's actually quite manageable in terms of how things are voiced and how difficult it is to transcribe. It's a good way to delve-into-the-deep-end without drowning. Let me know if you want the score.

 

Get a room. *

Just when I thought it was 2020, I see we are back to 1399.


(* Please note: this is a joke. You both are really cool people, whom I respect, and I am just joking with you. Do not take this comment seriously )

 

I used to transcribe that way but I've found it more beneficial to notate. You can always use your keyboard to enter in notes if you don't want to enter them in manually. It's exceedingly helpful for getting a more "zoomed out" view of what is going on, though. Will get back to you with some score hopefully soon.

What's a new decade if you can celebrate a new century? Party like Henry IV has recently been crowned (thanks Wikipedia).

And it's 2020 now Doug. You offended me so I'm going to start a social media campaign to have your car torched and make you lose your job* (that's how millennials do things, right?).

(*Also a joke)

 

Hey Martin

Transcription wise, to my ear you're very close (though, Rohann, clearly has better insight on that). The most obvious deviation for me is the choir at the end, but I don't know if this was by choice? Musically it's just as interesting I think.

I can see why this might be a difficult track to transcribe, in spite of the seemingly simple chord progressions and repetition, as it takes place mostly in the low end and thus sounds quite muddy.

I think ultimately this is a technical achievement for you, as you have succeeded in getting very close to the original sound which I'm guessing is where you've been learning a lot. Getting a mockup to sound right is a whole skill in itself so good job on that.

I agree though, based on what I hear from the original track, that there's not much left for you to learn transcription/creative wise. I supposed if you continued working on this it would mostly be teaching you endurance and technical efficiency - both good things for someone who wants to produce good mockups of their work - but it all depends on what you want.

Either way, thanks for sharing it.

 

Daniel's reply made me think of something:

A good way to see if your template is working is to ensure you have a mockup of something perfectly transcribed. The benefit of this is that perceived gaps in your template may actually be found in the transcription itself. Sonically, your template sounds good (better than I can probably comment on), but filling out chords like I mentioned might reveal areas that need work or may make it sound that much better to your ear.

 

My best guess is Aaug-A#aug

 

hey Martin! good job on transcribing this. I don't know this score (I've never played blood borne) but I like it. its got some cool creepy vibes in there (and damn your brass sounds really good btw).

dude same. most of the music I really want to transcribe is from video games and films that you can't get the score. sucks, but there's also plenty of cool stuff to find out there.
anyways yeah I would just move on to something where you can check your work against a score. I was also doing some mock ups of video game tracks that I like,
but it got so frustrating not being able to figure out wtf was wrong with it lol.
its such a cool moment when you are really sure about something and then you find out you're completely wrong when you check it.
and also kinda comforting that you can be as wrong as you want and still end up learning the "right" thing.
hope to hear more stuff, thanks for sharing.

hey Rohann could I get that score? I REALY want to transcribe some LOTR lol.